Sunday, 22 December 2013

Excellent views of Lisbon from the Santa Justa Elevator

The streets of Lisbon are built on different height levels and elevators are sometimes a useful tool. The Santa Justa Elevator is the most famous one built by Mesnier du Ponsard who worked together with the architect of the Eiffel Tower in Paris. It should not come as a surprise that the 45m high Santa Justa Elevator is also erected in iron as main material component.

The vertical lift is connected with an iron bridge which allows passengers to walk over to houses onto the street above. Is this not special? But before going to the upper level street of the Chiado district, we take a small turning staircase to the Santa Justa observation deck.

Here you see the Ruins of do Carmo, a large church which was destroyed in an earthquake in the year 1755. Below you see the Rossio Square and straight ahead in the hills, Castle St. Jorge. It was cold that morning but the sky was blue which provided us nice pictures.